Back to Books With a Sigh of Relief

SO...

...let's talk about books and reading and similar, enjoyable topics, shall we? We've had enough of sobering topics for one week, God knows.

Tonight, while meandering about the blogosphere, reading other people's posts and commenting here and there, I found a book list that fascinated me. Thanks to a post by Kristen M of The Estella Society, I discovered "Top 100 Chapter Books," composed through a survey by Elizabeth Bird from the School Library Journal. When I saw that the book that dominated my childhood, Charlotte's Web, tops this list, I knew I had to write about it. There are several lists for other categories of children's and YA books available on the SLJ site, as well, so you can pick your favorite type to design a reading challenge for yourself if you'd like.

I'm sure I don't have to tell my regular readers that I'm in no position to take on this list as a reading challenge right now--though I hope to do both it and the Nobel Prize-winners for literature when I regain some normalcy--so I will content myself for now with noting how many of the top 100 I have already finished. Those I've read are listed in red type. I will try to come back periodically and update it if I manage to complete any more of them.

Total read (as of 2/15/2014)=34

100. Love That Dog--Sharon Creech
99. The Boxcar Children--Gertrude Chandler Warner (My 2nd-grade teacher read this one to the class.)
98. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire--J.K. Rowling
97. The Diamond in the Window--Jane Langton
96. The Horse and His Boy--C.S. Lewis
95. The Little Prince--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
94. Ramona and Her Father--Beverly Cleary
93. Journey to the River Sea--Eva Ibbotson
92. Flipped--Wendelin Van Draanen
91. Pippi Longstocking--Astrid Lindgren
90. The Children of Green Knowe--L.M. Boston
89. The Mouse and the Motorcycle--Beverly Cleary (My mom read it to my brother and I.)
88. The BFG--Roald Dahl
87. The Strange Case of Origami Yoda--Tom Angleberger
86. Peter Pan--J.M. Barrie
85. Ella Enchanted--Gail Carson Levine
84. The Long Winter--Laura Ingalls Wilder
83. Ozma of Oz--L. Frank Baum
82. The Cricket in Times Square--George Selden
81. The Witches--Roald Dahl
80. The Four-Story Mistake--Elizabeth Enright
79. The Egypt Game--Zilpha Keatley Snyder
78. Ballet Shoes--Noel Streatfield
77. My Side of the Mountain--Jean Craighead George
76. Diary of a Wimpy Kid--Jeff Kinney
75. The Saturdays--Elizabeth Enright
74. Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret--Judy Blume
73. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever--Barbara Robinson
72. Where the Mountain Meets the Moon--Grace Lin
71. Each Little Bird That Sings--Deborah Wiles
70. Walk Two Moons--Sharon Creech
69. The Ruins of Gorlan--John Flanagan
68. The High King--Lloyd Alexander
67. A Long Way From Chicago--Richard Peck
66. The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate--Jacqueline Kelly
65. Wonder--R.J. Palacio
64. The Twenty-One Balloons--William Pene du Bois
63. The Great Gilly Hopkins--Katherine Paterson
62. Clementine--Sara Pennypacker
61. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory--Roald Dahl
60. Bud, Not Buddy--Christopher Paul Curtis
59. The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane--Kate DiCamillo
58. Swallows and Amazons--Arthur Ransome
57. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase--Joan Aiken
56. A Little Princess--Frances Hodgson Burnett
55. All-of-a-Kind Family--Sydney Taylor
54. Half Magic--Edward Eager
53. The Graveyard Book--Neil Gaiman
52. Betsy-Tacy--Maud Hart Lovelace
51. The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread--Kate DiCamillo
50. Number the Stars--Lois Lowry
49. My Father's Dragon--Ruth Stiles Gannett
48. The Bad Beginning--Lemony Snicket
47. Little Women--Louisa May Alcott
46. The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle--Avi
45. Island of the Blue Dolphins--Scott O'Dell
44. Okay for Now--Gary D. Schmidt
43. Jacob Have I Loved--Katherine Paterson
42. Gone-Away Lake--Elizabeth Enright
41. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz--L. Frank Baum
40. Maniac Magee--Jerry Spinelli
39. The Invention of Hugo Cabret--Brian Selznick
38. Frindle--Andrew Clements
37. The Wednesday Wars--Gary D. Schmidt
36. The Witch of Blackbird Pond--Elizabeth George Speare
35. Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing--Judy Blume
34. Where the Red Fern Grows--Wilson Rawls
33. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH--Robert C. O'Brien
32. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry-- Mildred Taylor
31. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland--Lewis Carroll
30. Matilda--Roald Dahl
29. The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy--Jeanne Birdsall
28. The Golden Compass--Philip Pullman
27. Little House on the Prairie--Laura Ingalls Wilder
26. Winnie-the-Pooh--A.A. Milne
25. The Watsons Go to Birmingham, 1963--Christopher Paul Curtis
24. Ramona the Pest--Beverly Cleary
23. Hatchet--Gary Paulsen
22. The Dark is Rising--Susan Cooper
21. The Phantom Tollbooth--Norton Juster
20. Because of Winn-Dixie--Kate DiCamillo
19. Little House in the Big Woods--Laura Ingalls Wilder
18. The Book of Three--Lloyd Alexander
17. Harriet the Spy--Louise Fitzhugh
16. Tuck Everlasting--Natalie Babbitt
15. The Secret Garden--Frances Hodgson Burnett
14. The Hobbit--J.R.R. Tolkien
13. The Thief--Megan Whalen Turner
12. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban--J.K. Rowling
11. When You Reach Me--Rebecca Stead
10. Bridge to Teribithia--Katherine Paterson
9. The Westing Game--Ellen Raskin
8. Anne of Green Gables--L.M. Montgomery
7. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler--E.L. Konigsburg
6. Holes--Louis Sachar
5. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe--C.S. Lewis
4. The Giver--Lois Lowry
3. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone--J.K. Rowling
2. A Wrinkle in Time--Madeleine L'Engle
1. Charlotte's Web--E.B. White

A Review of "The Casual Vacancy"

The Casual Vacancy

by J.K. Rowling

I finished this book in a mad dash at 4:00 a.m. this morning.  It is now nearly 10:00 p.m., and after giving myself the whole day to process it, I have to sit down and review it while it's still a fresh wound on my mind.  I don't use the word "wound" in an entirely perjorative sense; after all, when a surgeon recently repaired a hernea for me, I was very grateful to have him do so.  However, the large incision he made in the process was certainly a wound nonetheless.  And honestly, I'm still not sure how grateful I am to J.K. Rowling for the experience of The Casual Vacancy, but certainly not as grateful as I was to my surgeon.  Of that I have no doubt whatever.

All of us knew going in that there would be no magic or centaurs or floo powder in this book.  We wished we were wrong about that, but we knew that we weren't, and that all the publicity for this book had pointedly reminded us over and over that this is Rowling's first book solely for ADULTS.  Yet my overriding impression throughout most of the book was that this book was for Rowling what Equus was for Daniel Radcliffe--it was as if she wanted to shock, to prove that she does know stronger swear words than, "Bloody hell!", and is aware that teenagers actually have sex every day all over the world.

The language of this book is extremely crude.  I never met a swear word I didn't love, and I routinely ruffle people's feathers before I remember that not everyone employs the full force of the English language in ordinary, dispassionate conversation.  So, I really wasn't that bothered by the language, but I know many, many people who would never have survived past the first chapter or two.  They would have been desperate to bleach their brains.  The much greater challenge for me was the actual content of the book.  Nearly everything that took place from start to finish was on a scale of negativity ranging from unpleasant to totally horrific.  Until the very end, there's hardly a single character that you can actually like.  It is just an unrelenting onslaught of hateful human thought and behavior and depressing, tragic events.  If the book had been by almost ANY other author, I would've given up in disgust very early on.

Here's why I didn't.  There were several moments in the last three or four Harry Potter books at which I thought, "Oh, my gosh!  She's finally let the whole thing get away from her.  My favorite series is about to jump the frigging shark!!"  She always pulled it off in the end.  After the genuinely epic Harry Potter saga, I had learned to trust J.K. Rowling.  Implicitly.  So I barrelled on through this tale of woe, often thinking to myself, "I am used to your writing always ending with an absolutely life-affirming larger message.  How on EARTH are you going to manage that in these last 100 pages, Jo?!"

I'll be damned if she didn't manage it in the end.  I was absolutely gob-smacked that she pulled it out of the fire, but she did.  I kept thinking that in order to try and put a decent ending on this long, drawn-out tragedy, she'd have to make people change so much and behave so completely out of character that she'd just be blowing sunshine up our asses, and it would be completely unbelievable.  But let us never forget that when all is said and done, the woman can WRITE!  My God, she can write, and she managed it in the end.  I think the only question will be whether that ultimate payoff will be big enough for others who wade through all the misery to get to it.  For me, it was--barely.

Banned Books Week 2012

Faithful readers, it is once again the time of year when we announce proudly that we will make our OWN choices about what we read, thank you very much. One of the most popular and longest-running slogans for Banned Book Week has been simply, "I read banned books!" No doubt you've seen it on posters, t-shirts, pins and bumper stickers, and whether you know it or not, it's as true of you as it is of anyone who purposely walks around wearing it.  That fact was driven home to me very sharply when I consulted some of the websites available on Banned Books Week, and discovered that some of my favorites were considered indecent or dangerous by busybodies somewhere in this country.

If you've read much of this blog within the past year, you know that I experienced a profound connection with The Hunger Games on a number of levels.  Most important among them is the fact that my family ORIGINATED in District 12 (i.e. Appalachia), and I thought Suzanne Collins did an excellent job portraying how difficult life was--and too often still is--in one of the nation's most poverty-stricken regions. While I freely admit that the books are rather hard-core, I was still shocked to discover that The Hunger Games was among the top 10 most often banned books last year.  And of course, we all know how much I adore Harry Potter, and what a furor there was when those books first came out and offended, HORRIFIED, so many Fundamentalists (including me at the time, to my undying shame).  Suddenly I realize how easily those excellent books could have been taken away from me, how much I would've missed out on if people who support censorship had their way.  It's scary to think about, and makes me even more determined to fight for the universal right to read what we please.  Hopefully, it will be a truly UNIVERSAL right for everyone on Earth someday.

Old Hufflepuffian

Hello, loyal followers!  The more eagle-eyed among you may have noticed that my blog has recently begun sporting a new badge of honor--a House banner which proudly declares that I have been "Pottermore sorted" into Hufflepuff.  (Those badges, by-the-way, are available here.  God bless the lovely people who created them.)  And those of you who just REALLY have too much time on your hands, and also have photographic memories, may be asking yourselves (and me), "Wait! Didn't she say a few months ago that she had been officially sorted by Pottermore into RAVENCLAW? Somebody's playing fast and loose with their facts here!"

Well, in point of fact, I've been sorted twice, you see.  "Cheater!" you now cry in righteous indignation.  "You have TWO accounts, while I'm still waiting to get the confirmation e-mail for my FIRST ONE?!"  A very understandable reaction, but I swear I haven't just been gathering extra Pottermore identities for shits and giggles.  No, I was sorted into Ravenclaw during the Beta (i.e. trial) period of the site's existence, but now that they have opened up to everyone, I had to go through the sorting again, like everybody else, and the Sorting Hat apparently found different stuff in my brain this time.  Considering the adventures I've lived through in the past few months, I can't say that I'm too surprised.

For ten house points, can anyone recite for us Rowena Ravenclaw's famous motto?  Very good, Miss Granger!  Indeed, "Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure."  And once upon a time, when I was garnering Master's degrees as if they were wild flowers waiting to be plucked in a field, and dreaming lofty dreams about proceeding straight on to a Ph.D., I think I actually believed that.  Now, don't anyone panic; I haven't had a complete personality transplant.  Still reading 950-page non-fiction books for fun, still teaching my daughter the names of ancient Egyptian deities as fast as her interest permits, still a Geek, die-hard and proud.  But I also suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and one of its effects is that it plays havoc with your thoughts.  Lack of concentration, loss of interest in research or writing projects that once enthralled you (or anything else, for that matter, except playing video games until 4:00 a.m. to avoid the nightmares you know are coming as soon as your head hits the pillow)--these are all classic symptoms, as are the famous flashbacks, of course, my first of which I finally experienced last week.  Hell-a not fun, by-the-by.  In other words, your "wit" can easily be knocked off-center by this disorder.  You don't get dumber or anything, you just find it more difficult to marshal the resources at your disposal.  Thank God it hasn't damaged my interest in reading, and I am devouring books as quickly as ever, even if I occasionally have to read a sentence several times in order to fully take it in.  My friend and comrade in arms in all this, Dorothy L. Sayers' famous detective creation, Lord Peter Wimsey, also suffers from PTSD (though in his day it was called "shell-shock"), and reading about him and his fellow WWI vets is a little like doing group therapy for me.

Naturally, this may have called another question to your mind: "Wait a minute? You've never been in the military, have you?  Besides everything else, your profile picture would seem to suggest that you...uh...don't have the physique for it."  And you're quite right.  However, PTSD is not just a problem for the poor men caught in the idiocy that was Trench Warfare, or the idiocy that was Vietnam, or the idiocy that IS Iraq and Afghanistan.  (By-the-way, does anyone see a pattern forming here?  Almost as if, 9 times out of 10, war is just a really stupid way for a government to abuse its own citizens by giving them PTSD and other irreparable injuries?  Sorry, slipped onto my soapbox for a minute.  *climbs ponderously down from soapbox*)

ANYWAY, victims of natural disasters, or long-term abuse, or terminal illnesses, or those who have seen loved ones suffer through prolonged terminal illness, all are prone to develop PTSD in the aftermath of those events.  There's been no abuse in my history, thank God, but as to the others...

(This isn't actually a picture of MY flood, but I will post one as soon as I can find one.)

English, Indiana--June 7, 1990

Police knocked on our door in the middle of the night, informing my parents that the flash flood would soon reach our street.  My parents, in turn, woke me, we grabbed a few things and went up the enormous hill above to spend the next few hours with our neighbors in their trailer, because if the waters had reached them, we would have been watching for Noah shortly thereafter.  The waters did NOT reach that trailer, but we did watch people drive boats down Main Street the next day--or just hitch a ride on a passing refrigerator.

Besides this little life event, my parents tried as often as possible to die throughout my childhood--from pleurisy, from lupus, from heart attacks.  Of course, they actually tried NOT to die, but as Eric Idle of Monty Python fame has pointed out, "Life will get you in the end."  You may wonder why, if this shit started in my childhood, I'm only just now developing all these symptoms.  Well, I haven't, first of all; I've had them off and on for years, but they've finally reached a whole new plateau, I'm afraid.  Secondly, they've done so because it's called "POST-Traumatic Stress Disorder" for a reason.  Until the trauma ends, you don't fully develop the disorder, because your mind and body believe that you don't have time to do so--clearly, life-threatening things are happening around you.  Your body just keeps pouring on the adrenaline to get you through whatever the next crisis will be until the crises finally stop.  When you do that more or less on-going for twenty-some years, you've got one hell of a debt to pay to your poor body and mind when they finally figure out that the trauma is over.  My grandmother, presumably the last person I'll have to worry about for a LITTLE while, anyway, (PLEASE, JESUS!), died this past December.  Ladies and gentlemen, let the mental games begin.

IN OTHER WORDS, I've been having one hell of a time of it lately, gang!  I found a local counseling center at which I start therapy in two weeks *fingers crossed that these people know what they're doing*.  Last night, I actually got a break from the horrifying, heart-rending dreams that have left me dreading sleep.  Many nights, I sit up to obscene hours, watching BBC comedy on YouTube or playing on Pottermore, until exhaustion finally claims me and I find out for another day that I can't avoid the dreams by just not ever sleeping again.

On one of these marathon nights recently, I received word from Pottermore that my "real" account was ready, and I could come get sorted like everybody else.  This is done, of course, by answering personality-quiz type questions about yourself, and unless you're an idiot, you can tell which way the wind is blowing on these questions.  When it asks you things like, "Do you want to be thought of as ambitious?", little green signal flares ignite that spell out "Slytherin!", you know?  And while I was answering these questions, I reached a moment where I answered, trying to be truthful, that I wanted to be thought of as trust-worthy.  When I reached the end and discovered that I'd been bunged into Helga Hufflepuff's House, for one second, I was bitterly disappointed.  "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!  I'm a Ravenclaw, dammit!  Everyone knows that!"  Then I calmed down, thought for a moment, and realized something: I no longer believe in Ravenclaw's motto.  Intelligence is very important to me, and education is very nearly ALL-important to me, but in my current situation, one thing matters more.  I don't need people to blind me with science, or show off their intelligence.  I need them to be kind to me.  Moreover, I want to be kind, as well, because there are a lot of people in this world who are just as broken as I am, and our only hope is to all be in this together.

"Shell-shock" in the trenches

Do I now think intelligent people are pretentious snobs?  Of course not, especially since judging people is wrong and judging people as a group is just a recipe for disaster.  Furthermore, I haven't suddenly become dumb; I've recently become...unwell.  I value my intelligence.  I'm just learning to value my humanity most.

No "Blah" Like the Present, and a Resulting Review

I am suffering from the "blah"s after a long, exhausting day of SuperToddler SuperTerribleTwos.  To be perfectly honest, trying to catch up on my enormous backlog of book reviews doesn't sound like the most exciting way to overcome these Mommy Blues, but there it is--some people feel compelled to eat chocolate, I get overwhelming drives to write.  Notice I didn't say "an overwhelming DESIRE to write".  Sometimes, I write even when I really don't want to.  It's like my brain gets taken over by little hobgoblins with quills and parchment in their hands or something, and I simply must write.

So, what say we review one of those books that I've been putting off too long while the goblins are hammering away in my head?

A Review of the Medieval Poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, composed by some unknown medieval Englishman who thought that King Arthur, if he ever existed, was a fellow Englishman, instead of a Welsh Celt, by JNCL

Okay, confession time (and a bit of a mini-spoiler, but only a very little one).  For years, whenever I heard the title of this book, I always assumed that the phrase "green knight" refered to the coat of arms of the knight in question.  I thought his shield must be predominantly green, and thus his tunic and his horse's caparison would be, as well.  "Huh?"  Right.  Let me give you a picture of a "caparison," so you'll know what the Hell I'm talking about. 

See how the horse is completely covered in a draping cloth that has his rider's coat of arms worked on it?  That's a caparison.  (Triple word score with this picture, actually, because it also shows you what a coat of arms is, and how both horse and knight wore pictures of the arms into battle, or at least, into tournaments.)  Now you can see why I used to think that the knight was just called "green" because he was probably wearing a lot of green, and would just have appeared green all over.  NOPE.  I was wrong.  The knight who ends up challenging the brave Sir Gawain to a duel of sorts is ACTUALLY GREEN.  Green as lettuce.  His hair is green.  His beard is green.  His skin, and his horse's skin, are green.  Completely green horse, mane, tail and all.

This medieval romance has many of the expected elements of the French, courtly, chivalric romances, clearly reflecting the Anglo-Norman society that developed in England after the Norman Conquest and its obsession with Arthurian legends.  The primary enjoyment I get out of reading books like this is what they reveal about the culture that produced them.  I find it fascinating to discover what such a culture's ideals were, what they thought SHOULD HAVE mattered to them, and even more fun to find out what ACTUALLY mattered to them instead!  There are more column inches of text devoted to butchering fresh hunting kills in this book than to any other single subject, despite all the talk of Marian religious devotion and chivalric knightly behavior.  Sir Gawain might be brave, bold and virtuous, but it's clear that the poet is REALLY impressed by the guy who brings home the venison.

Anyway, if you like Arthurian romance, you should definitely look up this one.  And if you want to make both seem even much funnier, read this book and then immediately afterwards watch "Monty Python and the Holy Grail."  You may need an oxygen mask to help you recover!

Circling Along

Another week gone already, and my goodness, hasn't it been a week of yarn crafting?!  Well, it has for me, anyway.  Friday I attended my first monthly meeting of my new church's prayer shawl circle; since I didn't yet have their pattern, I just took along some yarn for a new baby blanket I've been wanting to start and got crocheting on it while I got to know everybody a little.  So, two crochet baby blankets in two different colorways going at once right now, and one of them is almost finished.

The big victory this week, however, was that I cast on a new project onto my newly-acquired CIRCULAR NEEDLES!  Are we so proud? Because I am.  Yes, after five years of scheming, dreaming, and several disastrous failed attempts, I am finally making some headway on the Ravenclaw house scarf I have dreamed of knitting.  Indeed, it was my ambition to make this scarf that drove me to learn to knit in the first place!  It's slow going, obviously, since I'm a very new knitter.  Even the halting rhythm I have slowly begun to build up with regular needles still hasn't developed yet on the circular ones, so it's definitely going to be awhile before it begins to look like a scarf, instead of some kind of yarn covered halo, but still I'm terribly pleased with my progress.

 

For any Harry Potter fanatic like me who may be wondering (because I would be, if I were you), yes, I will be using the Ravenclaw house colors as described in the BOOKS, blue and the closest I could find to bronze, rather than the blue and silver of the films.  Anything worth doin', etc., you know?

And what have I been reading in the interim since we last met?  Nothing less than one of the greatest writers in the history of the English language--yes, I have finally read Jane Austen's Mansfield Park.  I feel almost as proud of getting through that thrilling but linguistically challenging tome as if I had written something monumental myself!  If you've never read the book, let me just say that while the effort is absolutely worth it, the way that Jane Austen's language twists and writhes in this one may leave you feeling like you're trying to navigate a dense maze without even a breadcrumb trail, let alone a map.  Don't give up, but be sure to bring a lot of patience and your best attention with you!

My Oscar

"You like me! You really"--okay, that'll be quite enough of THAT!  Still, it was very exciting to me to receive my first ever blogger award this week!  I know some bloggers consider awards of this type a very well-intentioned nuisance, but I am NOT one of those.  I suppose, if you've built up a huge following and would probably be getting an award from someone every other day, it would be impossible to deal with, as you're supposed to pass them on.  But for my little blog, which is only a few months old and slowly making its way toward 60 followers, this is red-letter day, and it feels wonderful to have someone recognize and enjoy all the hard work I've put into this venture.

Thank you so much, Jean of Finding Your Gibbee, for bestowing upon me the Versatile Blogger award, and now it is my responsibility to make the following public service announcement, after which I will have the joy of passing this award on to a few more bloggers.  Hopefully, it will make their day as cheerful as receiving it made mine.

The rules of this award are as follows.

-In a post on your blog, present at least 5 fellow bloggers with the Versatile Blogger Award.

-In the same post, include the Versatile Blogger Award.

-In the same post, thank the blogger who nominated you and link back to his or her blog.

-In the same post, share 7 completely random pieces of information about yourself.

-In the same post, include these rules.

-Inform each new winner of their award by posting a comment on their blog.

My chosen recipients are

1. Howling Frog Books

2. As the Spine Breaks

3. Tiny Library

4. A Strong Belief in Wicker

5. B's Book Blog

And finally, 7 random facts about me, your fascinating hostess.

*Blue has been my favorite color my entire life.  I'm really quite obsessive about it, actually.

*I love green cocktail olives, unadulterated with pimento or anything else.  All other types of olive I've ever tried tasted disgusting to me.

*I'm a PK.  (If you don't know what that means, just thank your lucky stars and go on about your life.)

*With a combined total from kindergarten to graduate work, I was in school for 25 years.

*My mother taught me to crochet, my paternal grandmother taught me embroidery, and I taught myself to knit.

*Thus far, I've been a fire-breathing Pentecostal, a member of the Eastern Orthodox church, and an Episcopalian, and that was just the first 34 years.  Imagine what I may get up to before I die!

*I'm an armchair Egyptologist.  My great ambition is to write a novel about ancient Egypt (because the world just doesn't have enough of those yet, right?)

Bonus Fact:

RAVENCLAW RULES!

The Victor's Mailbox

To the victor go the spoils, so they say.  Thus, my mailbox had a very pleasant week, more than making up for in quality what it may have lacked in quantity.

BOUGHT:

First off, let's talk about the book I bought for myself that finally arrived this week, though it was ordered before Christmas.  These are the joys of buying a used book from across the pond; it just takes a long time to get a book sent from the UK to the US when you don't pony up for expedited shipping.

Either way, the book finally arrived in all its glory this week, completing a set I've been determined to own since 2005.  I had to wait several years until even used copies of it were within my fiscal reach, especially considering the astronomical exchange rate between the US dollar and the Pound Sterling.  Yes, readers, I am finally the proud owner of--well, "a picture is worth" etc.

For any Americans who may be reading this and didn't realize until just now how much better the covers of the British originals are than the American versions, I am truly sorry to have forcibly altered your worldview in such an abrupt fashion.  Don't get me wrong; I LOVE the artwork done by Mary GrandPre in our American exemplars, and would consider any edition perfect that was the UK original with the Bloomsbury cover and GrandPre's illustrations inside, but since that's not available, I insist on owning copies of the originals.  "NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN CHANGED," and all that sort of thing.  Sorry, got a little worked up.  Moving on.

WON:

I was incredibly pleased to receive this week a copy of The Victoria Vanishes, courtesy of a delightful giveaway hosted by Peggy from Peggy Ann's Post.  I honestly knew nothing about this book when I signed up for the giveaway, except that I'd been seeing it all over the place and the cover looked almost unbearably intriguing.  Naturally, it turns out that it's #6 in a series I don't own the rest of--yet!  Oh, drat, a whole new series I'll have to buy.  Unfortunate me.  Oh, the suffering.  HURRAY!  Excuse me.  Sorry.  Got a little worked up again.

Anyway, that was my exciting week, along with obsessively tuning in to every new episode of Downton Abbey and discovering Sherlock and holy sh*t! Where has that show been all my life?!  Okay, I've really got to get a handle on this bout of worked-up-outburst I'm suffering from, but it's true--I can't BELIEVE I haven't been watching Sherlock since the very beginning!  If you haven't seen it yet, put down your book for an hour (and yes, I realize I'm speaking sacrilege by saying that), flip open Netflix streaming and watch the pilot.  You won't be sorry (unless your viewing tastes are TOTALLY different from mine, in which case, I'm sorry in advance).  I'll stop rambling now.  Happy reading!

Top 10 Late Lamented Authors

I've been compiling my list for the Top 10 Tuesday question this week, "Authors you wish would write another book," and it turns out that many of my favorite writers are dead!  I'm not sure what that says about me, or about the current state of publishing--probably nothing that profound, I'm willing to bet--but there it is, all the same.

Without further ado, "Bring out your dead!"

10.  Brian Jacques--the wonderful Redwall series that made us all believe that the characters of Watership Down could go badass in the right authorial hands. Requiescat in pace.

9.  Anne Rice--who is actually still alive, and therefore REALLY needs to write another in her Christ the Lord series.  To be perfectly honest, however, I can live quite handily without her adding to the already over-bloated vampire fiction population.

8.  Jean Plaidy--nom de plume of Eleanor Hibbert.  Oh, my dear, how I would love to see what your take would be on the MODERN royal scandals and sagas of the day, if only you were here to write them!  Requiescat in pace.

7.  Tom Clancy--I honestly don't know whether to consider Tom in the still-alive category or not.  They claim he is, but it's been so many years since he actually WROTE a book that has his name slapped somewhere on its cover that I have my doubts.  I begin to suspect that he's like the Chinese emperor whose body was embalmed and toured the country in a carriage because the government feared there would be too much instability if word got out that he was dead!  Tom, I miss YOUR books.  I'm thoroughly weary of everyone ELSE writing "your" books, though.

6.  Terry Pratchett--is definitely still alive, and very much still writing books, despite a diagnosis of Alzheimers, which kind of makes him my hero.  Seriously.  I include him on this list because, just for me, he needs to concentrate all his writing energies on keeping me supplied with new Nac Mac Feegle books the rest of my life, the darling wee scunners.  Wee Free Men Forever!

5.  L.M. Montgomery--Only in such a truly august company could the creator of my beloved Anne of Green Gables rank so comparatively low on the list.  The world will always need about a dozen more of her books, even if we won't ever get them now.  Requiescat in pace.

4.  Chaim Potok--It seems I'm just going to keep raving about this man on my blog until SOMEONE finally says in the comments, "Okay, I surrender!  I finally took your advice, read one of his books, and it WAS, indeed brilliant."  Anybody going to go ahead and do that on behalf of all the rest of my readers?  Because I promise you, the man was a genius, and the world has lost a great soul.  Requiescat in pace.

Getty Images

3.  Sir John Mortimer--Nothing short of the death of his inventor, the final putting down of the pen, could make the incorrigible Horace Rumpole, barrister at law, stop appearing before the Old Bailey bench or the Uxbridge Magistrates' Court in defence of the Timson clan who were his bread and butter for some forty years.  We miss you, Sir John; you were an original, and a fine citizen of the human race.  Here's to "the Golden Thread that runs through British justice".  May I see genuine liberty revived in my lifetime.  Requiescat in pace.

2.  Jane Austen--Unbelievable that Jane is the runner-up here, I know, but still I must eulogize her a bit.  She was the first to teach the English-speaking world what strong, intelligent women could be, to decide for herself where her destiny lay, to prove to the world that a woman's mind could be the equal of any male writer's anywhere, and to lead the charge for staying single rather than settling for Mr. Wrong or Mr. "Eh".  To her we owe every strong female character from Josephine March to Miss Marple.  Without Jane Austen, there is no Hermione Granger, and we are all her spiritual daughters.  Requiescat in pace.

1. J.K. Rowling--She's the only author in the world who could beat out Jane Austen for the top spot, and I can give her no higher praise than that.  Ms. Rowling, the world is crying out for more of your extraordinary gift.  Even if you have no more Harry to give, it would be a travesty of epic proportions to never again use the astonishing talent you've been given to entertain, educate and inspire your fellow man.  Humanity needs your words, and I've never yet known a writer who could actually STOP writing.  Please, miss, may we have some more?

And an Afghan in a Pear Tree

Yes, friends, the now famous "Christmas blanket" appears on Yarn Along for one last week.  I had hoped to have it done before I posted this week, but I've still got a few rows of edging to apply, not to mention the seemingly never-ending task of weaving in the ends once the project is "finished".  Is there a knitter or crocheter anywhere on Earth who actually ENJOYS that process?

So, the blanket is finally all but finished, and I will next turn my attention back to the nascent scarf that will be my first completed knitting project if I ever manage to finish it.  I really like the beginning I've made on it, so hopefully it will go fairly quickly, especially as I'm developing that stitching rhythm that we must each eventually acquire in order to succeed at any handiwork endeavor.  Obviously, I will be bringing you the latest updates on events as they occur.

Finally, as to my current reading life, have you ever reached a point at which you've officially lost count of how many books you're simultaneously reading?  That's where I am currently.  Believe it or not, the book in my picture for this week is something I grabbed off my shelves "for a bit of light reading"--Hermione Granger is my hero!--in the midst of also working on a book about an ancient Greek explorer named Pytheas, Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.  (There's pretty much never a time when I'm not re-reading some volume of the Harry Potter series.  Once AGAIN I say, Goodreads, you need a re-read function!!)  After a lifetime spent as a student, I seem incapable of being content unless I'm trying to read more books at once than any one person can balance.  I know; I'm strange.  But at least I'm happy!

Post-Christmas Nightstand

So, now that everything has been unwrapped and a giant, garden-sized trash bag full of once-beautiful wrapping paper carried out to the can on the curb, what has this Christmas added to my nightstand reading?  I'm willing to bet that pretty much ALL of us book bloggers have more books on our nightstands every December 26th than we had on December 24th.  I got enough new books that some of them are still scattered throughout the house, and another, though on the nightstand, is so cool that it's going to get a post of its own.  Here is a quick peek at the new arrivals important enough to immediately land themselves beside my bed.

Library Borrowings:

Ms. Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs--I've finished this one, and it is just hovering, waiting to be reviewed when I've completely recovered from a nasty cold.
13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson

Audiobook:

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone--Imported all the way from merry old England, and performed by Stephen Fry. I still haven't made up my mind if I prefer it or the American version, though, which is performed very impressively by Jim Dale.

And my favorite, a Christmas gift I bought for myself:

I just adore Demi's gorgeous books, and have been absolutely obsessed with Egyptology since I was in elementary school, so there's nothing not to love about THIS beauty!

Top 10 Giftable Books

I've been playing catch-up all week, since my wonderful Good Man Michael and I took a weekend trip together (post coming as soon as I get some pictures pulled together).  Meanwhile, though it is barely still Tuesday--and isn't still Tuesday at all in some parts of the world--here is my contribution to this week's Top 10 Most Giftable Books on The Broke and the Bookish.

10. Big Bang by Simon Singh--I bought this book as a Christmas present for myself this year.  In many ways, my science education throughout all my years of schooling was WOEFULLY inadequate, due in large part to the fact that I was raised in a fire-breathing Pentecostal household, and most Pentecostals are terrified of science, all its pomp and all its works.  Ergo, I am attempting to educate myself by filling in the gaps I missed.  I wish I could buy copies of it for all my family members who are still Pentecostal.  But then, I don't really see a point in giving all my relatives something with which they would immediately build one giant, communal bonfire.

9. Olivia Claus by Kama Einhorn and illustrated by Jared Osterhold--This isn't exactly a long-beloved children's classic or anything, but my SuperToddler LOVES Olivia and the book is very cute, so I got it for her.  She was thrilled with it when I surprised her with it the morning after I bought it.  I believe that Christmas-themed gifts should be given BEFORE Christmas, don't you?  Otherwise, you don't have any time to really enjoy them before the season is over for another year!

8. If I could, I would buy my brother the entire Harry Potter series in the most beautiful collector's edition available.  There are two reasons why I can't.  First, those special editions cost a fortune per book, let alone buying them all in one go.  Second, he firmly believes that Harry Potter is of the devil and is a satanic plot to surreptitiously teach children witchcraft under their parents' very noses.  (I can't judge him too harshly; I used to believe exactly the same thing.)  However, I think he could really get into them and we could have some AWESOME conversations together, if he'd just read them, especially since he's completely nuts for some video games that happen to use magic heavily.

7.  Go the F**k to Sleep by Adam Mansbach and illustrated by Ricardo Cortes--I would buy this book for anyone I know who can tolerate the full range of the English language and has a child anywhere between ages 2 and 10.  I LOVE the fact that this book is a fully-illustrated, hardback picture book, just like any juvenile literature you see in the library, with the one major exception that it is written to be read ONLY by parents (or those who babysit a lot).  This book is hilarious, and I cannot recommend it highly enough for those days when you feel like you are slipping slowly into toddler-induced madness.

6. The Bible--If I sat down and figured it for a while, I'd probably find very few years during which I didn't either give or receive a Bible.  What type of Bible depends on a number of factors; one year, Mom wanted a really reliable translation.  Another, she wanted to examine the Septuagint more thoroughly.  This year, I would be buying for a young friend of mine, a girl my mother and I used to babysit and practically helped raise for the first few years of her life.  She's half American and half Brazilian, and is headed to spend a year of her teen-aged life in the South American paradise.  She's trying to learn Portuguese in preparation, and I can only say that whenever I've been studying a language, I've always found a Bible to be an ideal study tool--a text with which I am already familiar helps me catch important vocabulary points and idiomatic expressions.

5. The Penderwicks at Point Mouette by Jeanne Birdsall--For years, my mom read to me and my brother when we were kids, and around the time I started college, my parents and I began to experience a role reversal.  My dad's advancing diabetes and heart disease, overall deteriorating health, led to his partial blindness.  When he could no longer read for himself, I began occasionally reading books aloud to both of them when I was home on vacations.  Mom and I were still working our way through the first Penderwicks book when she died.  I'd love to be able to read the latest one to her.

4. Regretsy: Where DIY Meets WTF by April Winchell--In the world of handmade crafts, I guess I'm an all-around traitor.  I crochet, I'm trying to learn to knit, I make jewelry, I make rosaries--and yet, I love both Etsy AND Regretsy.  Apparently, that paradox demonstrates some heinous flaw in my character, but there it is.  I was browsing on Amazon one night a few months ago, when I stumbled across this book and laughed so hard I nearly fainted.  I'd love to buy copies of it for all my crafty friends, except I'm not sure they would all take it in the spirit in which it was intended.  I would give it for fun, but some of them might think I was insinuating something.  (For the ones who still crochet toilet paper covers, that's exactly what I'd been doing.  Which is why I won't be giving these as gifts, though I really want to.)

3. The Unknown Book--Did you ever read a book in childhood, LOVE it, promptly forget what the title was when you returned it to the library or lost it while moving house, and long to own a new copy of it or give it to someone else as a gift for basically the rest of your life?  I have several of these.  One was a boardbook I owned and simply adored when I was really young, about a kid looking outside his window to watch the seasons changing outside.  Another was a library book about a family who got conned into buying some swamp land, only to find out it was the most magically fertile farming land on Earth, and would grow entire forests overnight and crazy stuff like that.  My greatest loss, though, was a children's book about a boy who took a simple cardboard box and piece of string and created forts and castles and all sorts of amazing, imaginary adventures for himself.  If you can identify any of these books by the snips I've been able to remember about them, you'll make one book blogger very happy this Christmas!

2. Wreck the Halls: Cake Wrecks Gets "Festive" by Jen Yates--Okay, I think purchasing this book as a Christmas gift definitely wins me the daughter-in-law of the year award.  For about two years now, Michael and I have been sharing tidbits from the riotously catastrophic world of Cake Wrecks with his parents, but they've never actually visited the website themselves and still have only a vague idea who we're talking about when we mention Jen and John Yates.  How timely, then, that Jen released a book of winter holiday wreckage in time for the Christmas shopping season this year.  My in-laws are getting a copy of this book, and whether they enjoy it or not, I think they'll be finer people just for owning such awesome geekery.  (In case you're wondering, they don't read my blog, though it would be my luck if they finally start reading it today!)

1. The Hobbit, or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkien--This isn't a book I'm giving or would like to give this year, but is instead an account of my greatest book-giving Christmas triumph to date.  By miraculous good fortune, I managed to find the above photograph of the actual edition in question on Goodreads, so when I tell you that a decade ago, I bought my brother a beautiful, slip-covered copy of The Hobbit with runes embossed on the cover, you can see exactly what I'm talking about.  My brother has loved Tolkien's Middle Earth for years.  He also has the well-deserved reputation of being the best in our entire family and circle of friends at picking exactly the right gift for people.  You can imagine my sense of gratification, then, when he was thrilled and floored when he opened THIS present!  He was even more shocked when I read the runes on the cover to him.  He thought they were one of Tolkien's invented languages, like Quenya.  Turns out, Tolkien used the good old Futhark (or actually, the Anglo-Saxon "Futhorc") for his dwarvish written language.  I shouldn't have said so, though; to outsiders it would just make one a bigger dork, but among fellow geeks, it practically gives you geek god status if you actually read and speak artificial languages!  Qapla'!

Literature (n.) Um...

Welcome to another installment of the Literary Blog Hop, a delightful and thought-provoking meme in which our hosts at The Blue Bookcase challenge us to think and write intelligently about literature.  I don't know if I'll succeed in that lofty goal, but we'll give it a shot.  (Confession: Since my answer to the prompt question this month could be considered controversial, I deliberatelty waited until after I'd written this post to read anyone else's posts for the month. If I sound like I'm directly echoing someone else, or challenging someone else, please know that it was entirely unintentional.)

This month, we're discussing how to interest the "anti-literature" camp in our favorite supergenre.  What do you recommend to the person who says they "don't like 'literature'?"

Photo by Tom Murphy VII

I once had a literature professor in college who assigned us a reading by John Ruskin, just so we could see what BAD literature was like.  And told us so!  Let's face it--some of what people consider "literature" deserves to be disliked.  If all this person can see in her mind when she hears the term is deathly boring tripe written by dead people, it's hardly surprising that she's not interested.  I think we have to shake up people's understanding of what literature is a little bit.  (In this respect, I find the definition that the Blue Bookcasers themselves give quite useful, and I can do no better than to paraphrase it.)  "Literature" is meant to denote a written work that will outlast many of its peers not because it is a real page-turner--though that certainly helps--but because it is in some way ground-breaking, challenging, eye-opening.  It doesn't have to have been written in a previous century to be good literature.

Perhaps one of the best ways to demonstrate this is to recommend a book that your "non-literary" friend wouldn't expect to hear you call "literature".  I hold degrees in both linguistics and English, and one thing I've learned is that average human beings never give themselves enough credit for being rational.  Native speakers of English often say things like, "Oh, I don't speak good English, or at least, I don't speak it properly."  A perfectly constructed, grammatically correct English sentence about how a person who has spoken English since infancy doesn't speak her own language!  It's quite possible that people who enjoy reading, yet say they "don't like literature," aren't giving themselves enough credit for making good book choices, and aren't crediting their favorite authors with the ability to craft a literary novel.

17th-Century Portrait of Geoffrey Chaucer

Now, am I suggesting that Debbie Macomber's or Richard Paul Evans' works be considered great literature?  Hardly.  I like Debbie Macomber, but I wouldn't vote for her stuff to appear in the next Norton Anthology of American Literature.  However, the ability to distinguish "literature" from "a good yarn" has a lot to do with simply getting some education on the subject, and sometimes, people read books with "literary merit" without knowing they've done so.  Really good authors can slip the "literature" inside an ooey-gooey delicious coating of fluff and have many of their readers never be the wiser, like parents slathering their children's broccoli with cheese sauce.  Even readers who sat through entire semesters on Chaucer, Shakespeare and Dante--which I did--can dive into these books and enjoy the literary merit, or not, as they choose.

Which brings me to my actual answer to this question.  If a friend of mine who loved to read said she couldn't stand "literature," my immediate response would be, "Ever read Harry Potter?" 

Leaving aside all those who think Harry Potter is the Spawn of Satan, and those who just can't stand fantasy fiction, the majority of responses would probably be something along the lines of, "Yeah, but that's technically for kids, isn't it?  I liked it, even though I'm an adult, but I felt kind of funny about that."  Or else, "Oh, they were awesome, but I'd hardly call that literature, would you?!" 

To which I would respond, "That's EXACTLY what I'd call it, and there's a reason that so many adults liked those 'children's' books."

I may get major argument on this one, but in her Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling encapsulated many of the most fundamental literary tropes in the Western canon--the archetypal mother (Lily), the voice of wisdom and reason (Hermione), the hero of epic (guess who?).  Hermione's like a one-woman Greek chorus, for heaven's sake, except that the hero actually hears her and stops doing some stupid things! 


A Brownie

More importantly, Rowling touched on some of the oldest human themes ever known, dating back far before anyone discussed the narrative arc of exposition, complication and denoument.  Harry Potter is the messiah figure who in turn is simply the dying god of the world's most ancient religions--some of which are still living and are now MODERN religions.  Moreover, no one can dispute that in the Wizarding World, we have a narrative vehicle that is unique, a structure that adds to the scope of human expression and therefore has literary merit in and of itself.  Within that vehicle, this series is bursting with references to classical and medieval folklore.  Unlike many of its modern fantasy, pulp fiction cousins, however, Harry Potter does not twist those classic human imaginings into new and unrecognizable shapes to make them convenient plot devices.  In fact, Rowling challenges us to find out what many of these creatures used to mean to our ancient or medieval forebears.  Were you aware that if you left clothes out for fairies/brownies, they would take offense and leave your house?  I didn't know that my European ancestors believed that, until reading Harry Potter made me decide to research it.

Obviously, this is only a starting point, but it is a VALID starting point, and if my "anti-literature" friend said she'd never read any of them, I would send her off to the bookstore with stern orders to not let her head hit the pillow that night until she'd at least read "Chapter 1--The Boy Who Lived".  It would be the first step toward preparing her to discuss Christ, Mithras, Osiris and Horus, as well as the works of Joseph Campbell and Edith Hamilton.  If she revealed that she was a Potter maniac, I would then say, "Excellent!  How about we read Beowulf or The Odyssey together now?  If you liked Harry Potter, you just might love one of those two!"